Official Sync for Outlook & Google Calendar – Thank God!

March 10, 2008

I’ve been scratching my head for awhile now regarding Google calendar and how to sync it with everything else that matters (mainly Outlook since thats permanently on for me). Unfortunately, there has been no way to do this without performing some crazy hack which is usually not a 2-way sync between Outlook and Google calendar. Chances are that I am not the only one who has been having headaches over the calendar syncing issues as Google has finally decided to give us a hand by release a little program that syncs Outlook with Google calendar – Thank god!

I am a fan of convenience and the internet, combine them and you have Google calendar, it gives me the freedom to check my agenda from any computer as well as providing me access to other people’s calendars to see what they are up to. Unfortunately, I have also had the problems with having two calendars, one on Outlook which is linked in with my work flow and another on Google which links to things that I have added on a different computer.

Being a fan of convenience means that I need my “convenient” calendar on Google to link to my “always up to date calendar” Outlook without extra work, or else its no long “convenient”. Currently, I need to double enter certain appointments and meetings back into my Outlook Calendar from Google or vice versa.

To fix this problem, Google has created a little program that syncs my Google calendar with my Outlook and vice versa. This way, I will have one universal Calendar which is accessible from both my laptop as well as from any other computer that has internet access.

Adding to this, Google has also created an application which sits on my Blackberry and makes 2way sync between my Blackberry calendar and my Google calendar making life even easier for me. All you need to do is point your Blackberry browser to http://m.google.com/sync to download and install the application to your Blackberry. Then again, since the Calendar is now synced to your Outlook Calendar, you probably no longer need this.

Microsoft Outlook Calendar = Google Calendar = Blackberry Calendar

So in short, I am no longer just attached to only one computer, I can now access my calendar on Google or on Outlook and have notifications when I’m out on my Blackberry. Not only that, if I suddenly need to add something to my Calendar, I can do so via my Blackberry, which would update Google calendars, which would get synced to Microsoft Outlook on the fly. Great eh! Bloody love it!